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.They were to be attached to individual paratroopers by a quick release mechanism and fastened to his parachute harness by a coiled 20-foot rope.When the chute opened, the trooper was supposed to hold the weight of the leg pack, pull its release to separate it from his leg, and let it down to the end of the rope.It would hit the ground before he did.In theory, the trooper would land on top of the bundle and not have to waste any time looking for his equipment.It seemed sensible, but no one in the American airborne had ever jumped with a leg bag.The Yanks liked the idea of the thing, and stuffed everything they could into those leg bags—mines, ammunition, broken-down Tommy guns, and more.The men threw their kits, parachutes, and leg bags into the waiting trucks, climbed in themselves, and were driven out to the waiting planes.“With that done,” Winters wrote in his diary, “we went to work harnessing up.It's here that a good jump master can do the most for his men.Getting all that equipment on, tied down, make it comfortable and safe, then a parachute over the top, calls for a lot of ingenuity and sales talk to satisfy the men that all's well.”Dressed for battle, they sat under the wings of the planes, waiting.The nervousness increased.“This is the jump where your problems begin after you land,” they told one another.It was the “$10,000 jump” (the men had $10,000 G.I.life insurance).Men struggled to their feet to go to the edge of the runway to relieve themselves, got back, sat down, and two minutes later repeated the process.Joe Toye recalled Lieutenant Meehan coming over to his plane to tell the men, “No prisoners.We are not taking any prisoners.”At 2200, mount up.The jumpmasters pushed their men up the steps, each of them carrying at least 100 pounds, many 150 pounds.One 101st trooper spoke for all 13,400 men in the two airborne divisions when he got to the door of his C-47, turned to the east, and called, “Look out, Hitler! Here we come!”At 2310 the C-47s began roaring down the runway.When they reached 1,000 feet, they began to circle, getting into a V of Vs formation, three planes to each V.As they straightened out for France, most of the men found it difficult to stay awake.This was the effect of those pills.Through that night, and into the next day, paratroopers had trouble staying awake.Joe Toye did fall asleep on his flight: “I was never so calm in all my life,” he recalled.“Jesus, I was more excited on practice jumps.”On Winters's plane, Pvt.Joe Hogan tried to get a song going, but it was soon lost in the roar of the motors.On Gordon's plane, as on most, men were lost in their own thoughts or prayers.Pvt.Wayne Sisk of West Virginia broke the mood by calling out, “Does anybody here want to buy a good watch?” That brought a roar of laughter and a lessening of the tension.Winters prayed the whole way over, prayed to live through it, prayed that he wouldn't fail.“Every man, I think, had in his mind, 'How will I react under fire?' ”With Lieutenant Schmidt in hospital, Sergeant Lipton was jump-master on his plane.The pilot gave the paratroopers a choice; they could ride with the door off, giving them fresh air and a chance to get out if the plane was hit, or ride with the door in place, which would allow them to smoke.They chose to take it off, which allowed Lipton to lie on the floor with his head partly out the door.Most of the men were asleep, or nearly so, a consequence of the airsickness pills.As the C-47 crossed the Channel, Lipton saw a sight no one had ever seen before, nor would anyone ever see again, a sight that every man who was in the air that night never forgot: the invasion fleet, 6,000 vessels strong, heading toward Normandy.Gordon Carson was with Lieutenant Welsh.As the plane crossed the Channel, Welsh told the men near the front, “Look down.” They did, “and all you could see was wakes.No one ever saw so many ships and boats before.” Carson commented, “You had to be a little bit awed that you were part of a thing that was so much greater than you.”At 0100, June 6, the planes passed between the islands of Guernsey and Jersey.In his plane, the pilot called back to Winters, “Twenty minutes out.” The crew chief removed the door of the plane, giving Winters, standing No.1, a rush of fresh air and a view of the coast.“Stand up and hook up,” he called out.The red light went on.At 0110, the planes passed over the coast and into a cloud bank.This caused the formation to break up.The lead V plowed straight ahead, but the Vs to each side veered off, the one to the right breaking away in that direction, the one on the left over the opposite way.This was the natural, inevitable reaction of the pilots, who feared midair collisions.When they broke out of the cloud bank, which was only a mile or two across, every pilot was on his own.Only the lead pilots had the device that would lead them to the Pathfinders' Eureka signals;(4)Band of Brothers4.Pathfinders were specially trained volunteers who.With the formation gone, none of the others knew when or where to turn on the green light [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]